Bloody Dawn
by LunarRaven666
Summary: C.E. 284 Koori Aomori just wanted to pretend like her past didn't exist. Neil Asher was caught in the middle of a war and pining for a different life. Rewrite of old story. Will continue if reviewed.


Koori smiled at Satsuki as she walked up the bleachers and took a seat next to Koori. Koori turned her lavender eyes to the court where two refs were talking in the middle. She twisted a strand of her black hair around her finger. She had curled it today because her boyfriend liked it when she did that.

"Are you excited for the game today?" Satsuki asked as she shuffled around in her seat trying to get comfortable. She brushed her brown hair out of her eyes, which were sapphire gems focused on the locker room door where the team would come out of.

"Not really. I mean it's kind of boring watching the guys beat the other teams without breaking a sweat," Koori replied as she put her chin in her hands and watched impassively as the crowd roared as the school's team came running out.

"Shouldn't you be cheering even a little bit? Your boyfriend _is_ on the team you know," Satsuki replied, looking at the girl who was known to be cold hearted.

"I told him that I would continue going to his games but I had lost interest in them."

"That is just wrong," Satsuki said, shaking her head. "Oh, stalker alert." Satsuki said as she watched her former best friend take a seat towards the front of the bleachers, surrounded by her groupies.

"I don't know why you bother to even acknowledge her. I just ignore her. That makes her infinitely more angry," The game was starting, and Koori's boyfriend was standing next to the referee and the opposing team's forward, waiting for the referee to throw the basketball up. The ref blew the whistle and Cairu jumped up to grab the ball and pass it mid-air to Takuya who had already begun running toward the other team's hoop.

They scored within five seconds of the beginning of the game.

"What are you doing?" Satsuki asked as Koori pulled out her phone.

"Playing a game. Might as well do something productive while we sit here."

"You have absolutely no school spirit do you?"

"I don't have a spirit period."

* * *

"Neil!" Fai called out to his friend who was just leaving the shooting range on their ship.

"Hello Fai, is there something that you need?" Neil replied, running his fingers through his electric blue hair and shifting his blue eyes to his friend that ran up to meet him.

"I was just looking for you. The captain said that we're going to have another strategy meeting for the Moon frontier at 1700 hours."

"Really? Another one? I thought we finally covered all of the strategies in the last meeting we had yesterday," Neil exasperatedly said. "I just want to eat some food, and forget about this war that has been going on for far too long in my opinion."

"I feel you on all of those points but we're just the pilots. Captain is the one who makes all the tough decisions as to who actually dies on the battlefield," Fai said, a little too cheerily.

"You're strange."

"Says the guy with the nickname of Blue."

"Yeah, I wonder how they ever came up with that," Neil grumbled as they entered the Dining Commons of the ship.

* * *

"Did you get far in your game?" Satsuki asked as Koori stretched as they left the gym.

"Yeah. I beat the whole thing. It was kind of boring actually. And our team won again. I would've liked for them to have lost just for a change of pace. I mean seriously boring."

Satsuki shook her head at her friend. Koori was gorgeous, genius-level intelligent even for a coordinator, and could do any sport that she attempted. Not that she did. She said she lacked the motivation to do anything more than the bare minimum on anything. Whether it was for school or her social life. "I wonder why I'm your friend sometimes."

"I wonder the same thing," Koori said as they walked towards the parking lot.

"Doesn't Cairu need a ride home?" Satsuki asked her.

"He has to ride the bus. It was an away game you know," Koori gave her a look that made Satsuki sorry she had ever even said anything to the effect. "And besides, you know that the entire team comes to my house to celebrate their victories anyway. So it's not like he won't see me."

"I don't know why the sweet heart that is Cairu is even dating you," Satsuki mulled out loud as they neared to within a few feet of their cars.

"I wonder the exact same thing," A pretty coordinator with blond hair walked in front of them and cocked her hip out to one side. Sakura's groupies stood off to one side, giggling at what their leader was doing.

"Wonder away. Maybe your attempts at thought will actually get your brain to work," Koori said as she walked past, reaching into her pocket for her car keys. The resounding 'Ooh' from Sakura's groupies just made Satsuki roll her eyes as she began to walk past her former best friend. She started to rummage through her purse for her keys but Sakura stepped in front of her.

She looked up into the pink eyes that she knew so well and felt absolutely nothing for the girl standing in front of her. "Why don't you start hanging out with me again Satsuki? It was so much fun when we ruled the school together."

"I'm not interested Sakura, and if your groupies and you don't move Koori is going to run you over," Satsuki said, which caused Sakura to look back at the black car that was beginning to back out of its parking space. Satsuki walked around Sakura and got into her car while Sakura and her groupies scrambled out of Koori's way.

Her best friend being a cold hearted bitch was helpful sometimes.

* * *

Koori probably had about a half an hour before the team and her father showed up wanting to party. She behaved normally, pulling up into the driveway and getting out of the car as she waved to the neighbors. She walked up and put her palm on the reader and the door clicked open. She went inside and shut the door behind her. She dashed up the stairs and flew down the hallway to her room. She shut and locked the door behind her as she went to the wall across from her bed.

She removed the panel that she had modified and pulled out a laptop. She turned it on and was frustrated when it took about a minute for it to pull up the password screen. She hadn't turned it on for about a year now. She knew her orders. She just didn't follow them anymore.

She entered her password and opened the single mail that popped up on the screen. The base on Mars where she had trained had been destroyed and some important mobile suits had been captured. The Earth Force ship that had captured the mobile suits was heading for Earth. If she had an opportunity, she was to reclaim as many mobile suits as she could.

She snorted and turned off the laptop. This is why she had stopped following their orders. They couldn't get to her, and she just wanted to continue her normal life as Koori Aomori. With as closed off as the Earth was, there was no way that such a thing could ever happen. And besides, with current technology it would take about a year for a ship to reach the Earth from Mars. And that was using warp drive. But there was no way that a ship from the Earth Forces with its natural crew could survive a year in warp. If it was a crew of coordinators than she would believe it.

She put the laptop back into the wall panel and closed it. She sat down at the edge of her bed and stared at her wall. She knew that she should just destroy it, just get rid of all of the evidence that marked her as not who she said she was.

But she carried too much guilt for her to ever be able to just completely destroy every shred of her past. After all, there was no way for her to erase the deeds that she had committed before she came to Earth.

She heard the blasting of music and knew that the team had arrived at her house. She unlocked her door and stepped outside just as she heard her father open the door for his team. Someone bounded up the stairs, and she managed to close her door before she was engulfed by her giant of a boyfriend.

"Hey babe! Did you see the game?" Cairu asked her as he rested his head on hers, and held her super tight.

"Of course I did. I wouldn't have missed it for the world." She smiled up at her boyfriend who leaned down for a quick peck on the lips before he took her hand and dragged her down the staircase to where the rest of the team was starting the party.

That's right. All she wanted was a normal life. Which is why the mail disturbed her. Surely there would have been something on the news about the triumphant claiming of some of ZAFT's most advanced mobile suits. But she was just thinking too much. She smiled at her dad as Cairu led her into the family room of her house.

* * *

"There it is."

"I had no idea that it would look so amazing," Draco choked out. Twilight Moon just nodded his head as the entire crew stood on the deck watching the slowly approaching Earth.

"We've all seen pictures, but it looks completely different from Mars," Dragon said. "I had no idea the original would look so different than a planet that was terraformed."

The crew muttered their assent as the ship pulled to a stop outside of the line of defense of the planet. Soon they would begin negotiations to see if the Earth Forces would house them and accept their help in stopping ZAFT from implementing REVIS.

"Dawn is there," Draco said quietly. Everyone in the room turned to look at Draco.

"We don't know that for sure yet, Draco," Moon replied, just as quietly.

"But there's a chance that Dawn is there?" Chaos Ignite said, one of the few who had survived the training and the trip here. They had been forced to sacrifice quite a few trainees while they were escaping ZAFT space. They had chosen to be left behind, but they were still dead.

"A small, logical one. Where else would they send the best of us, the one who could blend in the most, but to the one place that no one had penetrated since the war began?" Dragon said.

"I always just assumed that they killed her for some reason," Chaos said softly.

"Unfortunately, there is that chance. We might not even be able to find her because of the vastness of Earth," Moon smiled bitterly. "Earth is nothing like the small terraformed domes of Mars. However, humans have wasted that beautiful vastness."

"We're going to begin negotiations now. All of those who need rest please get some. We don't know when we'll get the chance to do it again," Dragon said.

"Alright, alright Commander. Don't get your nickers in a bunch," Draco said as he patted Dragon on the shoulder as he walked by.

"You and your weird sayings Draco," One of the former trainees called out as the all filed out past Moon and Dragon. Once the door was shut, Dragon looked to Moon.

"You can leave if you want."

"No thanks, I think I'll stay here. Besides, one of us has to be charming when you lose your temper," Moon replied when Dragon sat down in the Captain's chair.

"Weird," Dragon muttered as he shifted, trying to get comfortable.

"But it fits you, so much more than it would fit anyone else on this ship."

Dragon shifted his red eyes to his friend and gave a tentative smile. Then he shook his head. "They even broke us of how to enjoy ourselves."

"But they gave us the tools we need to fight against them. As well as the motivation."

Moon typed the Earth Force's main communication line into the holo-screen and waited for someone to answer their call.

"If we succeed, we're going to end the war aren't we?" Dragon asked before Moon pressed the confirmation key.

Moon pressed the key. "We are."

* * *

Koori was beginning to get paranoid. It had been two weeks since she had last checked her e-mail and she had yet to hear of anything pertaining to a ship full of stolen ZAFT mobile suits. She knew that even if they had somehow stolen mobile suits from ZAFT, they wouldn't want to announce any information regarding the ship lest ZAFT receive the broadcast.

"Hey, is something wrong?" Cairu asked as Koori whipped her head around to look at her boyfriend. She had stopped and was watching the news absentmindedly when they were supposed to be shopping for a birthday present for her father. Cairu squeezed her hand and she felt horrible that he knew nothing about her.

His gold eyes sparkled with worry as he looked at her. She smiled at him. Smiling still felt so forced to her, but she had practiced in the mirror until it had looked normal.

"I'm fine, I just thought I saw something."

"_Currently at the Orb Military base a renegade ZAFT ship has just landed. The statement that the Earth Alliance has released is that this ship has valuable ZAFT technology that was stolen from Mars more than a year ago by renegade ZAFT soldiers. There is no reason given why the soldiers would go rogue, and many officials are uneasy that they were given access to the Earth. That's all for now, I will be keeping you updated on this groundbreaking story as more information becomes available."_

"Well that is definitely not something that I was expecting," Cairu said as the reporter finished her story and the channel returned to the main anchors, who began debating about what the betrayal by the ZAFT soldiers meant for the war. "Koori?"

"Hmm?" She blinked slowly and looked up at her boyfriend. She sent him a practiced smile. "I was just shocked by the news sorry. Maybe the war will end sooner than we can hope. Now we really do need to find my father a present."

She dragged her boyfriend away from the television screen and the person standing in the background of the reporter. He would find her. It was just a matter of when.

* * *

Moon smiled happily as he and Dragon were driven back to their ship which was under heavy guard around the clock. "That went much better than I expected. Now that they're going to be having their own spies looking into it, we just might be allowed to end this war ourselves with the very weapons they need to implement their plan. Poetic justice."

"And the fact that they have given you access to the database to look for Twilight Dawn is making you that much happier, right?" Dragon said as he rubbed a hand across his eyes. He had been trained to withstand weariness and survive without sleep, but a year of sleep deprivation had taken its toll. Dragon was looking forward to the next few weeks of detainment. At the end his men just might be the same people who had stolen the ship last year.

"Absolutely. I'm trying to think of cover stories that would arouse the least suspicion, I think I'll start with single parent families with a single daughter between the ages of 14 and 24. That should give plenty of range and I will input her physical characteristics into the search, just to see if she didn't change anything," Moon spewed out, overly excited of finding one of the two who had left them behind. Potentially alive.

"She isn't going to just join us you know. There was a reason that she was the first one given orders, because she was the only one who would follow them to her death. She was what they were trying to turn us into," Dragon said bitterly, remembering the girl who had so effortlessly become number one in ranking on the very first day of training. Who had so effortlessly killed the first trainee who they ordered her to.

"We have all been affected by that place Dragon," Moon said as the car sped up the cargo ramp into their ship, looking grim. "Did you ever notice how she was the only one who didn't come in on one of the ships carrying the trainees? I've been trying to get into her file with whatever spare time I have, and it's more heavily encoded than the REVIS plan was. Whatever they did to her Dragon, they never want anyone to find out."

* * *

Koori sat in her car for a moment. She knew that nothing had changed within her school, but she felt like she was going to be found here more easily than if she just hid at home. If Cairu hadn't had a home game tonight she would have taken a break from school. But as it was, she needed to play the part that she had created when she first came here.

Moon would come for her in his own time.

She grabbed her bag and got out of her car. She heard giggling and glanced to see Sakura and her groupies hovering around her car like it was cooler to be there than in the actual school building. Koori ignored them and locked her car. She walked briskly to the front doors, knowing that she was later than usual and that her boyfriend would be worrying about her.

She entered the school, and immediately saw her boyfriend looking sad with his shoulders slumped as he waited for her to show up. Koori smiled at Satsuki, who was the first one to notice her approaching the group. Satsuki kicked Cairu on the shin and when he looked up she jerked her head in Koori's direction.

Cairu's face lit up immediately.

Every time she saw that expression, she felt horrible. Or at least, there was a small part of her brain that had somehow developed in her time on Earth that told her she was horrible for lying to all the people surrounding her. Instead of letting the thing closest to emotion she had ever felt bug her, she just smiled as her boyfriend bounded effortlessly to her.

* * *

As the completely off-key birthday song petered off, Koori was feeling more relieved than she had since she had first seen the report on the news. In two weeks, there hadn't even been a cellphone call from an unknown number. She was slowly letting her guard down, and she didn't like it at all. Two years ago she would've mercilessly stalked the person stalking her until one of them ended up dead. But all the news had reports of was how the crew and ship were under constant guard and lock down and that the higher ups had yet to make a decision with regards to the fates of the renegade soldiers.

She smiled at Cairu when she noticed him looking at her. She was pulled into a meaningless chat with one of her teachers when her phone started ringing.

Satsuki was supposed to call her tonight to ask how it was going since she was unable to escape her house for the night. Koori excused herself from the conversation to go outside to answer the call.

"Hello?" She said as she noticed it was actually getting colder outside. She should've figured since it was at the tail end of fall but she just shrugged it off.

"Hello Twilight Dawn," The voice on the other line chilled her faster than the air outside.

"I was wondering when you would find me," She replied, feeling a bit anxious that the simple normal life she had built here would be destroyed just by talking to someone from her past.

"Oh I found you weeks ago, I just had to convince the people guarding me to give me a phone to call you with. Unfortunately, they would only give me a phone and not permission to leave base or else I would have come and said hello to everyone at your _father's_ birthday party."

She heard the emphasis he put on the word father. She knew exactly how he had found her. After all, Earth was actually fairly far from the main line of the war and none of the people on Earth felt like the war was actually real. The characteristic of these people to place almost everything they did online so that their friends and anyone else could see baffled her.

"I'm surprised that you don't have a more detailed page honestly. I was sure that I would find your page to be filled with the exact thing you did at the exact time you did it, but I see that you haven't been so polluted by these people as to do something that stupid," Moon continued when she didn't reply.

"What do you want?" She knew that there was very little that she could do for him.

"Well I'm sure you already know that so let's skip straight to the point. I've negotiated that if you turn yourself in to the military within the next week you will be cleared to join us when our ship is finally cleared for launch. Of course, you could try and run but you wouldn't get very far. I know you won't be contacting anyone in ZAFT since you haven't been following any of the orders they sent you. So that won't be an option for you. And lastly, you could pretend like we don't exist and try to go about your life, but I've also arranged that if you don't turn yourself in within a week a force will be sent out with orders to subdue you. And once they fail to do so, which they without a doubt will, they have explicit orders to kill you and bring your corpse to us so we can figure out how to break your connection to your suit. Your choice Dawn, you have a we-"

She hung up on him. There was nothing she could do. Of course he had won. She had just lazed about for the last two weeks, pretending like she really was Koori Aomori. Like she wasn't just a soldier trained by ZAFT.

She laughed bitterly as she realized what she should've seen sooner. She _had_ become Koori Aomori. After all, Twilight Dawn would have never let herself get attached to a place as easily as she had.

They had destroyed her guard unknowingly, with their own uncaring way about the war that she had been raised to fight in. She looked down at the phone in her hand as it began to vibrate. When she looked at the number, she saw that it was Satsuki but she let it ring until the voice messaging would kick in. She wasn't Koori Aomori anymore, but she wasn't quite the person that she used to be either.

"Hey babe, is everything all right out here?" Cairu asked quietly as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head.

She tilted her head back and smiled at him, feeling like it had become second nature to her. It was no longer practiced. "Everything's fine. Just needed some air."

As she let Cairu lead her back inside, she wondered what she would do. After all, no matter what name she went by, she didn't like it when she was given ultimatums and time limits by other people.

* * *

Neil left the strategy room in a rush, wanting to get some kind of exercise in after sitting through yet another extremely long strategy meeting. For some reason, the higher ups kept revamping the strategy as well as making ridiculous contingency plans that were somehow based on the Earth Alliance force having a single suit that could destroy their entire force. Neil sniffed at the idea.

There was only one person who could pull off that feat and she was on ZAFT's side. And she was definitely not a natural by any means of the word.

"Neil! Want to spar with me for a little while since we still have so much time before the mission?" Fai said as he ran to catch up with Neil.

"Sure, I mean besides strategy meetings, eating, sparring, shooting, and sleeping we haven't done much for the past few days so why break the routine we're in now?" Neil finished right as the alarms began going off.

"_Code yellow. All personnel to positions. Pilots prepare for launch. Code yellow. All personnel to positions. Pilots prepare for launch."_

Fai and Neil were already bounding off the walls of the ship.

"One good thing about no gravity is that sometimes it's a whole lot faster than running." Fai said happily as he landed on a perpendicular wall and pushed off above the people who were holding onto the handles and being rushed to their positions.

Neil flew after his friend as quickly as he could, but Fai was lighter and traveled a bit quicker than Neil did. They reached the locker room as Ever was finishing zipping up her pilot suit.

"It took you two long enough to get here," She said as she grabbed her helmet and went to leave the room.

"Unlike some people we don't just sit around in the locker room hoping for the chance to kill someone in a battle," Fai replied as he opened his locker and tore off his uniform jacket.

Ever ignored him and rushed out of the room. Neil managed to get his suit on before Fai and grabbed his helmet and went to leave the room as well. He was halfway down the hallway before he heard Fai behind him, cursing.

The doors to the hangar opened and chaos greeted his eyes as mechanics were rushing to prepare the three suits that had survived since the last battle. They were supposed to get a new pilot right before the assault on the moon base, but for now Neil lazily floated past the empty spot in the hangar to his own suit. He looked across the hangar at Ever, already in her suit, waiting for the order to launch.

Neil didn't particularly dislike Ever as Fair seemed to, but he had joined them after they had been a team for a half a year and he was sure there was some kind of past animosity. Ever held him in cool regard and he the same for her.

Of course, Ever was still nothing like her. But he was never supposed to talk about her. Those were his orders.

"_Code red. Code red. Ensign Zala, Asher, Jericho cleared for launch. Ensign Zala report to launch deck."_

Neil ducked into his suit and slipped into the seat. He pulled his helmet on and secured it as the hatch closed and the suit booted up. He watched as the screen slowly pieced together his surroundings and saw Fai's suit being pulled along the line to the launch deck. Once he was docked, the doors closed behind his suit and Neil waited for his name to be called.

"_Ensign Jericho report to launch deck."_

This time, the announcement came from within their suits, no longer needing to inform the entire crew about the happenings of the pilots. They had other things to worry about. As he watched Ever's phase shift armor take effect, her suit was pulled towards the deck. The doors closed behind her and Neil waited for his turn.

"_Ensign Asher on standby."_

"What?" Neil hastily punched in the communication code to the deck. Once Marie's face popped up he started yelling. "Why the _hell_ am I the _only_ one who doesn't get to launch? I thought it was a _code red_."

Neil tried to calm down because his bad impression of Marie's announcement had pissed her off. He should really stop mimicking her. "Those are your orders soldier. Now stop being a baby. I have more important things to deal with."

She cut the connection before he could yell at her again. So he sat there. While Fair and Ever got to go fight. Out of the three of them he was the better pilot so he didn't know why he wasn't launched.

As he sat there, a dull pounding began in his head. He began taking deep breathes and closed his eyes. He calmly reached into one of the storage compartment and pulled out a bottle of pills. Not here. Not right before a battle. He shook two into his hands slowly.

He had learned that panicking just allowed the takeover to happen that much more quickly. He swallowed them and felt the pounding increase before it slowly began to peter away.

_You know I'm a better pilot. I don't know why you fight it._

Neil shook visibly as the voice tore through his mind. He had the pills. That would stop it.

"_Ensign Asher report to launch deck. The path has been cleared for you to head directly to the Earth Alliance ship."_

"Roger." Neil sat still and closed his eyes as his machine was pulled forward. Once the doors shut behind him, he opened his eyes. "Ensign Neil Asher, launching."

* * *

Elis Hashimoto screamed as another blast shook the ship she was on. "Ensign Ishikawa is down! We have lost his comm-signal!" She screamed out above the clamor of the bridge.

"Retreat! Tell Ensign Takabe and Ensign Fuwa to defend us! Stop them! Where the hell are those reinforcements I ordered?" The Captain screamed at the top of his lungs. Elis quickly connected to the pilots.

"We are retreating, block until we are out of range of battle. We are retreat-"

"Why the hell are we retreating? I can beat them!" Ensign Fuwa shouted at her.

"They killed Ryuu. Elis, why did they kill Ryuu? Does retreating mean that I don't get to kill them back?"

"Follow your orders! The orders are to guard our retreat! And you stop bitching about it Daichi! Just do as you're fucking told for once!" Elis screamed into her headset. Gaining the attention of her fellow communicators. They didn't have the job of dealing with the pilots. That was her personal hell.

Daichi infuriated her to no end. As she cut the connection she went back to surveying the enemy's forces. It was one of ZAFT's smaller ships, which contained no more than four mobile suits. The upside to a larger ship was more mobile suits but the downside was that it wasn't quite as maneuverable as the ZAFT ship.

"They've launched another mobile suit!" Elis cried out, "It has a clear path at the ship!"

"Fire the Reflector!" The captain cried out in response.

Elis watched with horror as the mobile suit easily cut through the mobile suits that tried to get in its way. When she saw the reflector missile launch, she knew they would at least make it out of this battle.

* * *

Neil almost laughed at the pathetic defense that the naturals were putting up. There were two specialized suits that were currently battling with Ever and Fai while he was taking on the main brunt of the forces with back up from his ship.

The ship alone was taking out a majority of the Earth Alliance's mobile suits. He noticed the ship he was heading for launched a single missile at him, like it was supposed to stop him.

He held up his suit's beam rifle and quickly shot it. His flight path was directly through it. Once his mobile suit reached it though, his suit stopped.

"What?" Neil looked around and noticed all of the warnings his suit had flashing repeatedly. He tried to look through the cloud to see what was causing it when his suit lost power completely. Everything just shut down.

_It was bound to happen with your incompetence._

The headache had gone away, but apparently the voice wasn't quite done tormenting him yet. Without anyway to know or affect the battlefield in any way, he relaxed his grip on the controls of his suit. Whatever missile it was that the naturals launched was clever.

Probably some sort of particle in the cloud that reflected or blocked electric signals of whatever entered it. Without any sight, he was completely robbed of anything to do. That was one thing he liked about space battles, you never heard who was killing who, or what was going on. After all, a void like space couldn't transmit sound. He almost felt a jerk, but he couldn't be certain. After a second jerk which turned into a backwards motion, Neil knew the battle was over.

As he was being towed back to his ship, Neil wondered what was in the missile that they had fired. He had never seen anything quite like it. After the data his suit collected on it though, ZAFT scientists would come up with an appropriate counter. Slowly his suit began to power up.

Right in time for Ever to pull back the tow cord and let him get himself back into the ship. Had to love Ever's help.

Once he docked his suit and opened the hatch, he was bombarded with questions. Most from Fai.

"So what happened? Why'd you just stop? Do you know what was in that missile? How come you came onto the battle so late? Why'd you let the ship get away?"

"Give Asher some time to breath Zala," Ever said as they walked into the locker room. She was quickly removing her pilot suit. One thing Neil did like about Ever was her body. As a pilot she was in top physical condition and wasn't exactly shy about her body.

Neil gave an appreciative whistle as he floated by her. Ever smiled at him and Fai glowered on the way to his own locker. Neil really needed to figure out what was wrong with their relationship. He had been on the ship for a year and a half.

Fai was the first one to finish putting on his uniform somehow, and also managed to somehow storm out of the locker room in zero-gs.

"Do you mind telling me about the animosity between you two?" Neil asked as he finished zipping up his jacket. He was adjusting the cuffs while Ever put on her shoes.

"We slept together briefly at the beginning of our assignment together. Fair gets pretty possessive and when he wants to know something he just won't shut up. So I broke it off with him when his pestering got too much," She replied, standing up.

"Ah. I can understand why he would sleep with you and why you would dump him." Neil wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. Ever laughed, the first real laugh he had ever gotten out of her.

"Thanks for the compliments but you really shouldn't be nice to girls when you already have one you're obsessed with."

Neil looked at her. He smiled hesitantly. "I don't have any kind of girl like that."

"I never said you liked her, just that you were obsessed with her. Or if it isn't a girl it's something that you're obsessed with so you don't have time for any other kind of relationship." Ever flipped her long dark green hair over her shoulder and floated out of the room.

Neil shook his head slowly. Not wanting to think about what Ever said. He wasn't obsessed.

She was just different. She could handle him.

* * *

Elis's eyebrow twitched in annoyance when a tray was set next to hers in the dining hall of the ship. She continued eating, ignoring the person who had sat down next to her.

"Hi Elis. Sorry about earlier," Momo said as she sat down across from Elis.

"It's okay. I think I would react that way too if that happened then I was ordered to retreat," Elis said quietly, reaching over to take her friend's trembling hand.

"It was the green one. The green mobile suit. I'll destroy it. Kill the pilot like they killed my Ryuu," Momo muttered underneath her breath.

"If ZAFT is really positioning their forces for an attack on the moon base then you might get the chance sooner rather than later." It was the first thing that Daichi had said since sitting down, but Elis was still angry with him for yelling at her and she was ignoring him.

"You really think so Dai?" Momo's eyes grew wide and a smile lit her face up. It was more than Elis could do for her friend. After all, she didn't know what it was like to want to kill someone.

"Of course I do Mo. Now why don't you go watch what footage we have of the green suit and make a plan?" Momo jumped up, her tray still full, and ran away from the table. "Now the gorgeous why don't we also think of relocating to do something horizontal exercise?"

Elis didn't dignify his question with a response. She had almost finished her meal and she would much rather not finish eating than sit and listen to Daichi's horrific pick-up lines. Some of the male soldiers chuckled as Daichi called after her with more horrific lines that she ignored.

Honestly, Elis wouldn't have been able to eat anymore if she had tried. As she deposited her tray and left the room, Momo's face of glee at the chance to meet the green suit in battle turned her stomach.

"How could anyone enjoy killing another so much?" She whispered quietly as she moved down the hallway. The only reason she had joined the Earth Alliance right out of school was because she wanted this war to end.

It always bugged her that she seemed to be like the only person on Earth who actually cared about the war.

* * *

As Koori thought intensely about what she should do about the situation she found herself in, she began noticing things she had previously ignored. Or began noticing the lack thereof of things. Not a single student in her school was having a conversation about the war. With the continuing scandal about the renegade ZAFT soldiers and the report of a battle close to the moon base, one would think that is what would be important.

Instead, everyone around her seemed desensitized to the news of the war. It had only been going on for three years at this point, but she wondered how they could just not care.

Koori felt someone tug her hair and looked up at her boyfriend who was looking down at her. "I'm sorry, were you saying something?"

"Yes. But apparently you haven't heard a word I was saying." Cairu said angrily. He had been sitting next to her as they ate lunch outside since it was one of the last nice days they would have before winter. But then he noticed that she wasn't even paying attention to him talking. Cairu knew he shouldn't be mad at her, but this had been happening with increasing frequency lately.

Koori just didn't pay attention to him anymore.

"Sorry." She muttered out, but Cairu didn't think she was really all that sorry.

"What is wrong with you? Lately you don't even seem to care what I talk about or do at all?" Cairu raged, sitting back down next to her huffily.

"Do you notice how no one ever talks about the war?"

"What?" Cairu honestly wasn't expecting that. Koori put down her lunch that she hadn't even been eating.

"None of the students here talk about the war. It's almost like it doesn't exist. People are dying and being killed and not one student here seems to actually care. They just watch the news and then forget the information immediately. No one is motioning to stop it, no one is even thinking about anything of the sort. Even you don't mention it." Koori said.

Since it was more than he had heard his girlfriend speak since he had known her, he was astounded.

"I didn't know you felt that way. I'm just glad that you aren't cheating on me." Cairu said, leaning back and basking in the sun.

He opened his eyes when he heard rustling. Koori was shoving her lunch into her bag and hastily closing it.

"Is something wrong?"

"You do it too. I mention that it's the war that has been bugging me and then you completely change the topic! You don't even care! You're just like all the others! Does it even bug you that hundreds of naturals and coordinators are dying every single day? Because it sure doesn't seem like it!" Koori streaked off, and Cairu was left to stare after her.

In the entire year that he had known her, she had never raised her voice once. After nearly seven months of dating the only time she actually showed him real emotion was when she was yelling at him. Cairu shook his head and looked at his lunch. Suddenly, it wasn't appetizing at all.

* * *

She couldn't do it anymore. She couldn't pretend like she didn't watch the news every single day to learn even the tiniest bit more about the war. About the place where she was raised. About all the lives she had taken. She felt like she was one of the people on Earth. Uncaring and avoidant of the topic at hand.

She reached her car and quickly got in. It didn't matter to her anymore that she must have seemed crazy, running through the school to get to the parking lot. She didn't care anymore about the person she was pretending to be.

But she wasn't going to let Moon have his way. If she was going back to that life, she was doing it on her own terms. Since the rumors of her lunch time escape would be the news of the day once classes began, she didn't worry about people coming to look for her. Koori Aomori's father might try to call her, but she could just ignore it. It was only practice so he wouldn't bring the team back to the house.

She could, for once, play the emotional teen card while she gathered everything she needed to do the plan that was slowly forming in her head. One thing she knew for certain was that if the people were so uncaring about the war that was so far from their homes, the military bases would probably be lax in their security.

And she had just the way to learn everything she needed to about a certain military base.

* * *

Moon was all smiles. Two days had passed since his conversation with Dawn. He knew that she wouldn't make a move until closer to the end time of the ultimatum. Not only that, but once she joined and was approved by the Earth Alliance military, they were approved for launch. In fact, as he strolled through the ship, a bunch of new crew members were wandering around trying to find one thing or another.

There had been a map provided of the ship but obviously the soldiers weren't using it. One thing he notice was that all the new crew members were coordinators. That was one of Dragon's stipulations as Captain. He wanted to be able to use warp drive whenever he wanted to.

Brilliant move, Moon wished that he had been the one to think of it. He finally got to the hallway where his quarters were and meandered slowly towards them. This was one of the few hallways still fairly quiet. They hadn't put any of the new crew members here because the remaining trainees didn't want to trust or put their lives in the hands of people they didn't know.

His door slid open automatically. He walked to his bed as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Moon laid down to take a quick nap before he had to be in the hangar for the greeting of the new crew members.

Or he was until he felt a cold knife pressed down on his throat.

"What do we have here, a traitor among the new crew already?" Moon asked before opening his eyes.

"Afraid not. Just an old _friend_ come for a visit."

White eyes met lavender as Moon began laughing.


End file.
